Drive by maintenance: towards adaptive work environments with improved industrial HCI

Although automation is the backbone of the modern industrial complex, humans remain the indispensable shepherds of the machine park. One operator may be responsible for several machines that need to run continuously. Unfortunately, the complexity of the machines and processes increased faster than the improvement in the corresponding interaction technologies. We propose a multi-modal adaptive human computer interface system for the modern industry that relies on position, activity and other relevant contextual information, in order to provide a more flexible interaction in industrial scenarios. Information about the machine, is transmitted to the worker using a vibrotactile display on his wrist whenever the line of sight is broken. The context in which the user and the machine currently reside in, are determined by software artefacts (Apps). We leverage modern software concepts and an App based eco-system platform on the manufacturing shop floor to organize the software systems described in this paper. We evaluate transmitting arbitrary information via vibrotactile displays and come to the conclusion that such a system is feasible in industrial settings and may be beneficial as it has a very low distraction rate.